


First and Last

by Tasceri



Series: Extended Universe [9]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Consensual Relationship, Roxas is Ventus (Kingdom Hearts), See notes for relationships, child grooming, childhood crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24961024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tasceri/pseuds/Tasceri
Summary: One heart, two lifetimes, four kisses. (Mostly canon compliant, stand-alone. Please check the notes before reading!)
Series: Extended Universe [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/808422
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	First and Last

**Author's Note:**

> This fic explores a relationship between Axel and Roxas, but I've decided not to tag it as Axel/Roxas to keep this fic out of the ship tag and hopefully minimise drama. If you're an akuroku fan please read at your own discretion - this fic does consider their relationship to constitute child sexual assault.

The first time he kissed Terra was out on the cliff edge of the training ground, well after sundown, the sky blushing with stars. Training had gone really well and Ventus' body was flushed with the warmth and stiffness from a productive afternoon's exercise. He gazed up at the moon and felt happy, really _happy_ , as if in spite of the confusion and mystery that surrounded him he had somehow wound up right where he was supposed to be.

Usually Aqua joined them, but Master Eraqus was testing her world history tomorrow and she wanted to brush up one last time before bed. She was a few years ahead of Terra and a long way ahead of Ventus, whose previous education was only returning to him in fragments. Words still swimming across the page, brush strokes familiar and unfamiliar at once. He preferred sparring: the motions of his Keyblade came to him as natural as breath.

Terra and Ventus sat sharing a comfortable silence. They weren't often alone together. Terra's strong, bare arms seemed to gleam in the moonlight. Ventus felt giddy, as if he was catching his breath after an intense round of training.

He said, hoping it didn't show in his voice, "Hey, Terra."

Terra turned to look at him, a content half-smile on his lips.

"Yeah?"

That was when Ventus kissed him, succumbing to the sudden impulse, moving so quickly he near enough smashed their lips together. The butterflies of excitement instantly became crawling spiders of mortification as Terra jerked away the moment their mouths touched.

"Uh, it's late, we should go check on Aqua - she probably wants tea -" Ventus scrambled to his feet, the words stumbling out of his mouth as if to fill the silence and distract from what he'd done. But Terra caught his arm. Ventus hoped he couldn't feel his pulse, hear his blood roaring in his ears.

"Hey, Ven," he said. "Sit back down. Let's talk about this." Ventus squirmed: he couldn't judge Terra's tone. He was glad of the half-light disguising the hot blush in his cheeks. His body burned with the shame of it. 

"Maybe we could just forget that anything happened?"

"Aqua said she thought you had a crush on me," said Terra. He looped his arm around Ventus' shoulder. Ventus sat stiff and awkward, too aware of the lovely warmth of Terra's body and the furious embarrassed heat of his, too ashamed to even be indignant that they'd been talking about him behind his back. "You know I don't feel that way about you, right? And even if I did, you're quite a lot younger than me, and you've still got so much to work out. But that doesn't mean I love you any less just 'cause I love you as a friend."

"Did Aqua help you come up with that?" asked Ventus, forcing a laugh. It came out awkward, like the first few times he had laughed, his own voice sounding new to him.

Terra scratched the back of his head, the way he did when he didn't want to admit that he wasn't as perfect and self-sufficient as he tried to pretend he was. "Ah, yeah, I was just waiting for a good time to bring it up." He gave Ventus' shoulder a squeeze. Ventus felt himself relax a little, despite himself. "And maybe next time you have a crush on someone, check that they like you back before you kiss them?"

* * *

The first time Axel kissed him was up on the clock tower, late in the evening, long after their ice creams had been reduced down to wooden sticks. There were things Roxas was beginning to get a grip on: the daily routine of the Organisation, the weight of the keyblade in his grip, the evenings on the clock tower with Axel. Axel was calling it a tradition in the making. That was what Roxas' experience was beginning to teach him. You could start doing something for no reason, and if you kept doing it, _doing_ it became the reason. Like missions. Saying hello to people in the Grey Room. Eating ice cream with Axel.

Kisses were not something Roxas's experience had prepared him for, so when Axel kissed him he didn't know how to react. When Axel pulled away he angled his face across the horizon to disguise his confusion. Axel always said it was fine not to know things, but he also laughed at all the things Roxas didn't know, and if Axel had kissed him that probably meant that Axel thought he should know how to kiss.

"Sorry," said Axel, sounding sheepish. "I guess I couldn't help myself. You're really cute, you know that." 

Roxas had seen some cute things: at least, he'd seen things people said were cute. "Like... a moogle?"

Axel laughed. "No, not like a moogle. Like someone you'd want to kiss." He scratched the back of his head, which meant he was embarrassed at having to explain something people were supposed to intuitively understand. It meant he didn't know how to answer Roxas' questions, because the answers should have been obvious. Roxas laughed too, not that he knew how to laugh, only knowing to copy Axel. 

"Well," he announced, hauling himself to his feet, wanting the awkwardness to be over, "It's time we left anyway." 

Axel stood too, staring for a moment at the precipitous fall. "Yeah, gotta get your beauty sleep." They pocketed their ice cream sticks and shuffled through a portal. Roxas wondered if Axel would kiss him again, and whether he'd know what to do if he did.

* * *

The last time Axel kissed him it was under the oppressive light of Kingdom Hearts, its dull glow sucking all colour from Roxas' clinical, standard issue room. He hadn't stayed long at the clock tower, the space where Xion was supposed to be making him feel hollow and sick. When he excused himself Axel followed him, a flame against the lifeless walls, voice raised and hands gesticulating wildly. Roxas answered in the only way he knew: cold, biting, sneering petty insults. Where had he learned to be so cruel? From the Organisation, from its claustrophobic grey corridors and its delicate unspoken balances of power. And Axel. Axel, who had taught him everything, and left out so much. 

Axel's voice took on a cajoling tone, like it always did halfway through their arguments: "C'mon, Rox, can't we just talk about this like friends-"

"We are not _friends!_ " Roxas' chest was heaving, suffocating, all that empty space closing in around him. "We have never been _friends!_ " He stormed around the room, grabbing what few possessions he owned, needing the motion to distract him from the roaring in his ears. From remembering the pain on Xion's face. Remembering what she was.

"Rox, I know you're angry, but just calm down for a sec. Sit down. Let's talk it out."

"I'm not interested in talking." Clothes in his backpack. Toothbrush, hairbrush, body spray, towel. He picked up the book of world histories he'd been battling through for weeks, tossed it back on the bedside table. He owned so little. His existence amounted to so little. Just a fragment of a person, just like _her_.

"And where do you think you're gonna go?"

"Don't know. Don't care." The sea shells made him pause. So delicate. Roxas felt his throat tighten, his eyes prickle with moisture. Maybe his heart couldn't feel emotions, but his _body_ could, and they burned through him like electricity. He grabbed his socks from his bag, began to wrap the shells. His hands shook, threatening to break this last untainted piece of her.

"And what about me?" Axel was by the door. Guarding it. Roxas felt a flash of rage. Muscles tense, jaw tight, head pounding.

"I _trusted_ you. And you lied to me. About _everything_."

"What was I supposed to do?"

Roxas looked at him. His tall, angular body cloaked in black, the zipper a little way undone to hint at the pale expanse of his chest. His hair still damp from the rain, giving him a haggard look. _Anything_ , Roxas thought. _Anything other than this_.

"Don't you get it?" Axel said. He had crossed the space between them. His gloved hand on Roxas' chin, forcing him to look up at his hungry, desperate eyes. "I _love_ you." He leaned down and kissed him, quickly, guiltily. Knowing that the last thing Roxas wanted was to be kissed and doing it anyway.

_"Don't touch me!"_

Several expressions passed across Axel's face in quick succession: hurt, then outrage, finally that cold, distant disdain. Receeding back into the familiar lie. He watched Roxas for a few more moments, unspoken words hanging in the air, then left. Roxas wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve; his lips still burned. Shame. Anger. His pulse was racing. The shell in his palm was in pieces, speckled with blood. 

* * *

The last time he kissed Terra it was in the darkness of Terra's new bedroom, nestled deep in the surviving organs of Hollow Bastion. It was summer, when the nights were at their shortest; predawn light was already beginning to glimmer through the cracks in the curtains. When Ventus crept in from the corridor Terra already had company: Aqua must have joined him earlier, and now she was curled up in her own blankets next to the wall. Terra motioned for Ventus to join them, so he closed the door quietly behind him and picked his way over to the bed.

"Is she asleep?"

"Yeah, finally. Nightmares?"

There were so many: flashes of his life before he became Eraqus' apprentice, the violent golden eyes of his other half filled with contempt, Terra's face bearing someone else's sneer, the suffocating leather he had worn in another life, the friend who became nothing more than a glitter of dust floating on the breeze, the acrid tang of fire and the sensation of palms on his exposed skin...

The bed shifted as Terra made room for Ventus next to him, wrapping a quilt around his shoulders. Ventus wriggled close to him, wanting his warmth, his deep earthy smell. Not the way he once had. He felt so insubstantial, lurching violently from one life to another; he needed Terra to ground him. To remind him of who he really was.

He needed so badly to feel _real_. 

"I'm sorry I'm not the way I used to be," he whispered, so as not to wake Aqua. Her nights were the worst: sometimes she even woke Ventus from screaming. 

"No, I'm sorry," said Terra, looping his arm around Ventus and running his fingers through his hair. Such a gentle, affectionate gesture that tears prickled at Ventus' eyes. There was such a gulf that separated them, and yet they had never been closer. "I should have protected you."

Ventus rested his forehead against Terra's chest, listened to his steady heartbeat. He swallowed, his throat feeling dry, all those memories catching in his throat, sharp and jagged. He imagined the shape of each word: _I trusted him so much. I trusted him and he..._ But they never left his mouth. Terra already held too many chains of guilt. 

Instead he just whispered, "I'm glad you're back."

"This time I won't mess up so bad."

Ventus found himself chuckling. "Is that a promise?" 

"Yeah." Terra pulled him into a tight embrace, the tension in his arms betraying him. They lay together for a few quiet moments, Aqua shifting and sighing in her sleep. Then Terra murmured: "You're family, Ven. You always will be." He kissed the top of Ventus' head, the way he had in another life when Ventus had woken screaming from nightmares, seeing red eyes in every dark corner and feeling a pain like fire in every cell of his body. "Let's get some sleep while there's still time for it."

Ventus cupped his hand around the back of Terra's head and returned the kiss, in the parting of Terra's hair between the lingering streaks of silver. Then he settled down on the pillow, letting Terra rearrange the blankets around him. His body close. Safe. _Home_.


End file.
